Exploring Roles in the ECE community

    1.  In the current role that I am in, the state of Pennsylvania the Department of Education (PDE) and the Office of Child Development an Early Learning (OCDEL) oversees our preschool program and lays out the guidelines/requirements our program needs to follow. There are many days I shake my head at the changing guidelines/requirements that come out of PDE or OCDEL because I do not believe they are always child centered and many times we do not receive an explanation as to why these changes are occurring. I could see myself working at the state level in PDE or OCDEL because I have visions for the future of Early Childhood Education and would like to have some influence. My thought would be if I am working at the state level, I could hopefully in some way try to influence what is being decided.

       There are two jobs that are listed on the PDE website that I could see myself in; Early Childhood Education Advisor and Equal Education advisor. Unfortunately, those jobs are not currently open so there was no job description available. I can imagine some requirements would be:

- Master's degree from an accredited institution of higher learning and extensive graduate level course work in school administration

-Positive and proven record of successful experience in a responsible administrative position

-Teaching experience in a Pre-Kindergarten setting and/or elementary school

-Knowledge of principles and practices of early child development

-Knowledge of basic child development and psychology

-Ability to ready, interpret, apply and explain rules, regulations, policies and procedures

Mission statement of OCDEL:

http://www.ocdelresearch.org/default.aspx

                PDE site:

http://www.education.pa.gov/Early%20Learning/Pages/default.aspx#tab-

2.   The National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) is another organization that I would be interested in working for.  I am currently a member of NAEYC and this past weekend attended a regional conference. As I said previously I have visions for the future of Early Childhood Education and would like to try to positively influence it outside of the classroom. NAEYC is at the foreground of policy and influence in ECE.

Currently there were only two job opportunities listed and I could not find a general list of jobs so I do not know what skills would be needed for any roles within NAEYC.

3.     A local organization that I have recently become more familiar with is United Cerebral Palsy. I currently have a student that attends some of their programs and I am working in collaboration with my local UCP Early Intervention Program.  The UCP Early Intervention Program is much like my Early Intervention Preschool Program. It works mainly with children and families that have a child with a disability. UCP provides different therapies to the child and family.  One thing I was impressed with while learning more about UCP is that they offer Family Support Services and have a calendar of events on their website. I am a big supporter of family involvement/engagement.

There were jobs listed however none that specifically dealt with the Early Intervention Program. So again, I don’t know what skills would be needed for roles within UCP. 

http://www.ucpsouthcentral.org/index.html

End of Course EDUC 6165

I thought this picture was a good representation of some of the skills we all learned throughout this course. Thank you pinterest!

 

 

Best of luck to everyone as you continue on your own educational journey. Wishing everyone warm holiday wishes.

 

Communication Conflict

Over the holiday I spent a good amount of time with my parents, I love them, but 5 full days of them can be a bit much.  I experienced many communication conflicts over those 5 days. So for this assignment I am looking at the two of them and how they could handle conflict a bit differently.  The two skills I am looking at for them come for the Third Side (n.d.)

1.       The goal is not to end or eliminate conflict but transform the way it is expressed.

-          My mother is a perfect example of this. She is a yeller and a door slammer. She always says she “feels better” when she behaves in this way, but I do not feel it is an effective form of communication, which I have shared with her J which has elicited yelling and door slamming, lol.

 

2.       You do not have to take sides in a conflict, nor do you need to remain neutral.

-          This skill applies to me more than my parents. I frequently am pitted against each parent because I am an only child and they want me to support their cause. I often say “I am Switzerland, leave me alone.”  I can take sides when needed especially if it is something I am in agreement with. This past week it was how the Green Bay Packers laid an egg on Thanksgiving night while we were there in the miserable weather.  That is something I could take a side on.

 

The Third Side. (n.d.). The third side. Retrieved from http://www.thirdside.org/

Who am I as a Communicator?

The Listening Styles Profile (Rubin, Rubin, Graham, Perse & Seibold, 2009) is the one assessment that my results did not match how the other two people responded. In fact the results from my assistant and mother matched, but again, did not match mine.  My results showed that my listening style was in Group 3: content-oriented. I do believe that when I listen to others, I am looking for details to make sure I am making an accurate decision and in my professional life I need to make sure I am listening for details to understand what might be going on in the lives of my students and families.  Like the profile stated, I do feel that when there is a lot of information coming at me, I struggle with comprehending it all. There are many times that I “zone” out when listening to a lot of information because I can get overwhelmed by hearing all the information presented at once.  I try to take notes as much as possible because of that. The results of my assistant and mother had my listening style come out as Group 4: time-oriented. I can see why my assistant’s results showed that because in a work setting I do have to be aware of my schedule and have to carefully allocate when and how long I am going to be able to listen. My mother also knows what I am like as a professional and said the same thing, I have to be time-oriented during the work day. I did like that my mother pointed out, that if she were to do this survey for my professional and personal life, that the two results would be different. She believes if she were to answer the questions solely on my personal life or even had a non-work friend complete it,  my results may have been more in line with  Group 1: people-oriented.  I agreed with her when she brought this up, my listening style is very different in my personal life than my professional life, and a lot of it has to do with time.

The final communication assessment also surprised me a bit.  In regards to the Verbal Aggressiveness Scale (Rubin, Palmgreen & Sypher, 2009) I came out in the moderate range. I am going to be honest, I was expecting to be in the significant range. I say this because I can really call people out on things when warranted. When going over the questions though, I did find myself saying, “No, I’m not that bad.” I don’t attack people’s character or try to belittle them, so I can see why I am more moderate.  My mother and assistant’s results also showed that I was in the moderate level. My mother frequently made the comment while completing the assessment, “it depends on who it is.” This is a statement I agree with. A perfect example was today. I attended an initial intake meeting for one of my student’s at an outside agency for wrap-around services. I literally walked into the evaluation room with the parent and student and the agency worker started criticizing me regarding the incident reports I provided to the agency to help them understand the aggressive and unsafe behaviors this child is presenting. The agency worker didn’t even introduce himself to me or the parent before his critique began.  The agency worker told me that he did not agree with what I was doing in my classroom and that it is no wonder I am seeing these behaviors. Three different times throughout the 50 minute meeting this person criticized what I was doing in my classroom, in front of the parent. It took all I had to remain professional during this meeting and not become argumentative or defensive. I was so upset when I left! Had I not had on my “professional hat,” I would have become verbally aggressive toward this individual.

 

 

References:

Rubin, R. B., Palmgreen, P., & Sypher, H. E. (Eds.) (2009). Communication research measures: A sourcebook. New York: Routledge.

Rubin, R. B., Rubin, A. M., Graham, E. E., Perse, E. M., & Seibold, D. R. (Eds.) (2009). Communication research measures II: A sourcebook. New York: Routledge.

 

 

 

Cultural Diversity and Communication

I find myself communicating and interacting with different groups and different cultures all the time. I work in a city school where many families are low SES and culturally diverse and all of my students have special needs. These are the three strategies I try to make sure I am using so I can communicate effectively with my families.

1.       Be mindful of who you are interacting with.

·         Is this a single mom who will view my questions /concerns as me judging her?

2.       Develop creative flexibility.

·          Working in the city has really made me flexible. I often say to new therapist, “welcome to the city.” We have to change our mentality when working with families from a city culture.

 

3.       Become other-oriented.

·         I often think to myself, what are these families experiencing? Again, most of my families are from low SES and all of them have children with special needs. I have to try to put myself in their shoes.

Beebe, S. A., Beebe, S. J., & Redmond, M. V. (2011). Interpersonal communication: Relating to others (6th ed.). Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.
Chapter 4, "Interpersonal Communication and Diversity: Adapting to Others"
(pp. 85–114)

TV Show-Week 2

For this weeks assignment I watched the new TV show "Casual" on Hulu.

I think the biggest "aha" moment that I saw from this assignment is that there is a lot of non-verbal communication going on!  I could tell so much about how characters were feeling by the look in their faces. I guess I never focused on how non-verbal communication plays such a role in communication on screen and off screen.

A Great Communicator

Communication is the key to everything in life. It can make or break a situation. While trying to think of a person who exhibits great communication skills I thought about people within my own life, people I have met and people I want to be like. I wanted to look beyond day-to-day communication and think of a great orator that has taken a passionate position on something and made people take notice.
The person that came to mind as one of the greatest communicators I have ever had the pleasure to hear and someone I want to emulate is Wayne Dyer. There are four things that I feel made Wayne Dyer one of the greatest communicators.

1. Following his heart and making an emotional connection with his audience
2. Making a room come alive
3. Humor
4. Using his own experience

I personally feel that following your heart and making the audience, however big or small, feel what you are feeling is the best way to effectively communicate, especially when it's something you are passionate about. When people sense you are passionate about something, they take notice. The other three characteristics are also great attributes of an effective communicator. When I have given presentations I always make sure I add humor, use my own experiences and make sure my I am keeping my audiences attention.

I am personally quite sad that the great Wayne Dyer is no longer with us, but feel he will always be remembered for his all of the wonderful things he contributed to this world.